The directors of the Liverpool & Manchester company were unsure whether to use locomotives or stationary engines on their line. To help them reach a decision, it was decided to hold a competition where the winning locomotive would be awarded £500. The idea being that if the locomotive was good enough, it would be the one used on the new railway. The three judges of the competition were John Rastrick, Nicholas Wood and John Kennedy.

Eight conditions were laid down for the locomotives that entered the competition. This included the rule that the maximum weight was to be six tons. All wheels had to be sprung and the cost of the locomotive had to be less than £550. The gross weight of the train was stated to be not less than three times the engine’s weight. To qualify for the first prize the locomotive had to reach speeds of 10 mph (16 kpm).

The competition began at Rainhill on 6th October, 1829. On the first day over 10,000 people turned up to watch the competitors. The locomotives had to run twenty times up and down the track at Rainhill which made the distance roughly equivalent to a return trip between Liverpool and Manchester.

The Winner 

 
MECHANICS MAGAZINE, Description of the Competing Engines

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This is the blog of Anya Ixchsel aka Australian academic Angela Thomas who specialises in mulitiliteracies. Her research into the Second Life virtual environment is addictively interesting…..

http://anya.blogsome.com/

Two prevelant types of inquiry: deductive (Aristotle) inductive (Bacon) deductive inductive method: back and forth movement..investigator first operates inductively from observations to hypotheses, and deductively from hypothesis to implications in order to check validity against accepted knowledge (Mouly 1978) research: systematic contolled, empirical investigation of hypothetical propositions (Kerlinger) research v. experience systemmatic, controlled haphazard

A hypothesis, described by Cohen et al as an ‘educated guess’.

According to Kerlinger (1970) there are three criteria for a good hypothesis:

- It should be a statement about the relationship between two variables
- It should carry clear implications for the testing of the stated relations
- Should disclose compatability with existing knowledge
- Should be expressed as succinctly as possible

OK, so as an initial shot at this:

Can the use of computer games improve ICT Capability in 7 to 11 year olds?

As an ‘educated guess’ I feel that it is possible that children learn very little from formal ICT education at school, in fact children often find the use of computers in school frustrating. This view is supported by my reading (see Lankshear and Knobbel, Steven Johnson, Sutherland and Facer, Michael Lewis, James Gee).

The two key variables here are:

- Use of computer games
- ICT capability

These are going to need precise definitions and consideration of how they are going to be measured. The implication of the term ‘ICT capability’ is that I am talking about the government’s existing specifiction of knowledge and outcomes specified in the National Curriculum.

The variable ‘computer games’ is based on existing research that outlines ways in which computer games can develop problem solving skills. Specifically, I want to examine James Paul Gee’s notion of ‘probing’ (a skill used to solve problems in a gaming in environment).

This section will focus on developing my methodology for my masters degree

Having read Michael Goldhaber’s excellent ideas on the attention economy I recently tried a little experiment; to see how many views, comments and favorites I could get using the Flickr photo sharing application. This photo represents my best effort so far; over 200 views, 17 comments and 4 favs! Do I still think Goldhaber was right? You bet I do! The whole experience has been very exciting and rather addictive.

Well, this is my first post to my first blog. I thought it would be a good place to start with an introduction to the title of this blog. ‘Pyramids and Pancakes.’ It is the title for a chapter from a book written by Michael Lewis ‘The Future Just Happened.’ In the chapter he tells the story of a 15 year old boy called Marcus Arnold. Arnold was a keen Court TV watcher and, whilst browsing the askme.com site realised he could answer one of the legal questions posed by a user. He set himself up as an expert lawyer on the site using the handle LawGuy1975 when filling out the form. Experts on the site (all were qualified lawyers) were rated according to the quantity, speed and quality of their answers. Marcus ended up the number one ranked lawyer out of 150. In cyberspace how is it that a 15 year old boy can provide legal information that has greater value than 149 qualified lawyers?

when we look at revolutions, we find that the outward acts against the old order are invariably preceded by the disintegration of inward allegiances and loyalties. The images of kings topple before their thrones do -PETER L. BERGER